1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a fluid container containing fluid, a method for recycling a used fluid container by refilling the container with fluid, a method for piercing a cover film of a fluid container, a piercing jig used in the method, and an apparatus for manufacturing a fluid container.
2. Related Art
An ink cartridge removably mounted in an inkjet printer (hereinafter, referred to as a printer), which is a type of fluid ejection apparatus, for example, is known as a fluid container containing fluid. The ink cartridge includes a container body having a substantially flat box-like shape. An ink chamber is defined in the container body and contains ink as the fluid. An ink inlet hole is formed in a lower surface of the container body. Ink is initially introduced into the ink chamber through the ink inlet hole. A film is applied to the lower surface of the container body to cover the ink inlet hole, thus suppressing leakage of the ink through the ink inlet hole.
As the printer consumes the ink in the ink cartridge mounted in the printer, the ink in the ink chamber decreases and is eventually used up. The used ink cartridge is replaced by a new ink cartridge. Even after the ink cartridge is removed from the printer, the container body of the ink cartridge is still usable for repeated cycles. Japanese Utility Model No. 3118670 discloses a technique by which a used ink cartridge is recycled as a reusable ink cartridge by refilling the container body with ink. This addresses to efficient use of resources and preservation of environments.
The aforementioned document describes a piercing jig having a disk-like seating portion that sits on a portion encompassing an ink inlet hole, a sharp-pointed rod portion extending from the center of the lower surface of the seating portion opposed to the ink inlet hole, and a cutting portion having a plurality of blades, which are arranged on the lower surface of the seating portion and around the rod portion while being mutually spaced. To refill a used ink cartridge with ink, an opening is formed in a film covering the ink inlet hole using the piercing jig.
Specifically, the rod portion of the jig is passed through the film and into the ink inlet hole and the seating portion of the jig is brought into contact with the portion encompassing the ink inlet hole. In this state, the jig is rotated about the axis of the rod portion. This causes the blades of the cutting portion, which is held in a state pressed against the portion encompassing the ink inlet hole, to cut the film along the circumference of the ink inlet hole. Afterwards, a syringe, for example, is passed through the ink inlet hole via the opening thus formed in the film to refill the container body with the ink.
However, the jig of this technique may generate fragments of the film when cutting it. The fragments then may fall into the ink inlet hole. If the fragments enter the ink cartridge along with ink refill, the fragments may clog an ink passage or the like in the ink cartridge.